What a week!! It was a chaotic whirlwind of a couple of days, but it was so wonderful at the same time. 

For the last several months, our office has been planning our 2023 Congressional Fly-In event in Washington D.C to advocate for the telecommunications industry. With the job promotion I got a few months ago, this event ended up being one of my projects and I was working behind the scenes every week with our legislative team to make sure this would go as smoothly as possible. 

The closer we got, the more chaotic it got, and I’ll admit I was pretty anxious about it! There were a lot of little details that went into it and we were all trying our hardest to make sure nothing got overlooked. 

Well, it has now come and gone and I can safely say it went SUPER well! It was a very quick trip – flew out first thing Tuesday morning, came back first thing Thursday morning. It was a lot to pack in to 48 hours! 

Our opening ceremony took place in the Honeywell Headquarters building with a beautiful view of the Capitol itself. Over 75% of our attendees who registered made it to the reception and it was so great to see everyone in person again – and meet some of them in person for the first time! Not to mention I had to personally make sure all the hors d’oeuvres passed the taste test – they did! 

Monday, we were up bright eyed and bushy-tailed at 5am to make sure everything was ready to go for our Breakfast Briefing meeting before everyone took off for the Hill. It was a little chaotic, but we eventually got everyone where they needed to be! 

And with that, also kicked off our SD delegate meetings as well! We were fortunate enough to meet up with Senator John Thune, Congressman Dusty Johnson, and even though we weren’t able to meet face to face with Senator Mike Rounds, we did meet with his staff. It was a very productive day of voicing the concerns of the industry. And it brought back a lot of wonderful memories from my own time working in the Capitol. Back in 2014, I interned for Senator Thune, and while it mostly looks the same, it’s always changing too. I still knew my way around “okay” even after almost a decade since my intern days haha! 

To end the event, we had a closing reception in the Mansfield Senate room. It’s a BEAUTIFUL room, only about 100 feet away from the Senate Chambers. If you’ve never seen in, I recommend looking up pictures. It was so cool. We had a handful of Senators and Representatives stop by the reception and give a few remarks, and it was an opportunity to visit with our members once more. I had a lot of people come thank me for the work I put into the event, and to tell me they had a great time at their meetings. It was icing on the cake!  

AND to add to the wonderful event, I was able to spend a few hours with my best buddies, Alec and Josh! I haven’t seen them since Josh’s wedding last year, and I hate that we now live half a country away, but it was oh so wonderful to see them and catch up with them. Thank you guys for coming down to see me – we’ll have to do it again soon! 

Overall, it was an amazing, exhausting week. I’m glad to have this event checked off the list, but I’m ready to go to work on the next one. It hardly feels like work when you have this much fun! 😉 

Until next time! 🙂 

Megan Reiffenberger